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Tales from the archive
The stories
Colin Blakemore presents the BMJ's new video series, told in eight parts. These stories delve into the BMJ's 169 year old archive to unearth some of the leading thinkers of their time, and show the contribution they have made to modern medicine.
In this first video, Colin introduces the series and shows a sneak preview of what will follow in the coming weeks. Stories will include the birth of anaesthetic, the discovery of the anopheles mosquito as the vector for malaria, and the studies that hailed the link between smoking and lung cancer.
The issues
Colin Blakemore presents the BMJ's new video series, told in eight parts. These stories delve into the BMJ's 169 year old archive to unearth some of the leading thinkers of their time, and show the contribution they have made to modern medicine.
In this second video, Colin looks at the issues surrounding medical research with Bad Science author and columnist Ben Goldacre; Iain Chalmers, editor of the James Lind Library; and BMJ deputy editor Tony Delamothe.
A new world is born
The third video in our series to promote the BMJ's online archive now being fully searchable back to 1840 looks at Sir James Young Simpson, the man who discovered the anaesthetic properties of chloroform, and pioneered its use in surgery.
You can find may of Simpson's articles in the BMJ archive
Surgery transformed
The fourth video in our series to promote the BMJ±s online archive now being fully searchable back to 1840 follows on from Sir James Young Simpson, the man who discovered the anaesthetic properties of chloroform, to Joseph Lister, the father of antiseptic surgery.
Lister published in the BMJ for over 40 years, and all of his articles can be accessed online in the BMJ archive.
Death by mosquito
For the fifth video in our series we travel to the tropics to look at the beginning of our understanding of malaria. In 1900
Patrick Manson wrote a seminal paper in the BMJ "Experimental Proof of the Mosquitomalaria Theory" he worked closely with Ronald Ross, who went on to win the Nobel Prize for medicine for his work on malaria.
Click here to access Patrick Manson in the BMJ archive
Click here to access Ronald Ross in the BMJ archive
Since this film was made, the hope that artemisia may represent a powerful new source of antimalarial compounds has diminished
slightly with a report in The Lancet showning evidence of resistance in the field.
The TB trials
John Crofton pioneered the randomised controlled trial in a 1948 BMJ paper which looked at the antibiotic streptomycin to treat TB. Shortly before his death in 2009, Dr Crofton spoke to Professor Colin Blakemore about the importance of randomisation and blinding, and how it has helped to make medicine more evidence based.
The man who stopped smoking
Richard Doll was a luminary of clinical research whose case control study, published in the BMJ in 1950, first identified
smoking as an important cause of cancer and other diseases. The paper's findings were received with apathy, anger and disbelief.
This 10 minute film to promote the BMJ archive now being fully searchable back to 1840 charts Doll's remarkable life and the
impact of both of this paper, and his follow-up British Doctors' Study.
Doll wrote extensively in the BMJ, his archive can be accessed here
The woman who knew too much
Alice Stewart died one of Britain's foremost epidemiologists. However her recognition came late in her career, having spent
her life fighting the establishment's enshrined views.
In the 1950s when she started her work, x-rays were routinely used in foetal monitoring. It was Stewart who first showed the
link between the practice and childhood leukemia. She went on to look at the effects of low-level radiation exposure - uncovering
the true adverse effects of chronic exposure, and thus earning herself the enmity of the nuclear industry.
Her seminal paper on Leukaemia and Prenatal X-rays, was published in the BMJ in 1960.
